Three Percent

 Three Percent 

There was a small amount of pressure before the tooth gave, and his jaw felt like it was on fire. The taste of copper filled his mouth, and he gave an agonizing scream that gave way to coughing as he started choking on his own blood.

The man standing before him stared at him intently, holding the needle nose pliers out to show the tooth that was clasped within its grip.

Beside him, his wife was looking the other way, sobbing around the cloth gag the man had tied to her face.

“This would be a whole lot simpler if you would just tell me where it is,” the man said with a bored tone. “I may even let you go.”

Murphy gathered the blood in his mouth and spit it towards the man. The majority of it fell upon himself and the concrete floor of his own basement, but some splattered across the man’s face.

“I can not promise that my offer to spare you will last,” the man said as he turned to put the pliers on the table behind him. “Tell me where it is, and we can move on.”

The man removed his glasses and pulled a handkerchief from his pocket to wipe away the blood.

Murphy stood as best he could, being tied to his chair, and charged the man. For a brief moment, the man actually showed something other than boredom on his face. His eyebrows went up, and his mouth went to say something that was cut off as the top spire of Murphy’s chair pierced his chest.

As they slammed into the stone wall of the basement, the spire pushed through the man, and hit the wall, putting just enough pressure on the wood to splinter it where the back met the arm. His arm still tied to the arm rest, but now free to move around, Murphy pulled it back across his chest before swinging it down on the throat of the still astonished looking man.

That morning, he had falsely presented himself as a man wanting to buy the Truck that Murphy had listed on marketplace. Hours later, which seemed like an eternity with the torture that he had subjected Murphy and Lanore to, he had admitted that the deed to the house was his goal. He was going to use it to present himself as the new owner, having “bought” it from Murphy and his wife who then would “move on”. No purchase, no contract, just good old-fashioned land theft, and no one would be the wiser without Murphy and his wife to say otherwise.

Now, the man sat with his back against the wall, his own blood pooling from the chair spire still in his chest, and the splinter filled gash on his neck from the armrest, still staring at Murphy in disbelief.

Murphy used his free hand to untie himself from the remnants of his chair, before running to Lanore to free her. Lanore stopped screaming and ventured a peek to see the man dying on the floor.

She leapt to Murphy’s arms, and hugged him, sobbing again. She pulled away and then hit his shoulder.

“Why didn’t you just tell him where the deed was?” She screamed. “He ripped your tooth out! What were you thinking?!”

“Good point,” Murphy said. He looked down at the table and picked up his tooth from the grasp of the pliers. He winced at the sight of it. With a slow sigh, he dropped it into the breast pocket of his shirt.

Murphy then shook his head and grabbed one of the knives on the table the man had lain out to intimidate the couple with. He then sat in Lanore’s chair and kept an eye on the man.

“Go upstairs and call 911, and tell ‘em what happened,” Murphy said. “I am going to sit right here until they get here.”

“Why aren’t you listening to me?” She sobbed again. “He was going to kill us!”

“He was going to kill us either way, baby doll,” Murphy replied. “Besides, we bought this land with 3 percent interest. I ain’t going nowhere.”

© Jeremy L. Heath, 2025. All rights reserved